The Golden Age of Hollywood see end of review for listingRoderick Elms (piano)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/José Serebrier
rec. Watford Colosseum, London, 15-16 September 2005. DDD ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA RPO017CD [77:26]

Composer-conductor Jose Serebrier continues to surprise. His
career has not followed the institutional way of being principal
conductor of this orchestra or that. Opportunities are instead
sought, offered and taken. In this way a freshness hangs over
much that he does. The recording studio has yielded sessions
for recording the new, the exotic and fairly often the unfashionable.
Examples are legion and his Janáček and Chadwick (Reference
Recordings) leap immediately to mind.

In the case of these two discs Serebrier squares up to film music.
It’s a serious selection too, charting the vintage Hollywood
years from 1939 to 1976. While Hollywood film scores are not
the be all and end all and the time will surely come to explore
methodically the film scores of the USSR, of Germany and France
the fact is that Hollywood has been the home of some of the most
sumptuous music for the asilver screen. That word ‘sumptuous’ certainly
applies to the sound secured by the engineers for volume 2 at
Cadogan Hall in London.

Herrmann’s Vertigo has never sounded as ripe. There’s
also real rosiny grit and the panicky heat of the chase in the
violins of the North By Northwest prelude. The sound of
the music is reminiscent of the chilliness of The Day the
Earth Stood Still. Steiner’s Caine Mutiny march
has the requisite brazen blast and sheer excess - strangely at
odds with the psychological dimensions of the film. That could
never be said of the Herrmann music for Citizen Kane with
its sour Gothic afflatus contrasted with childlike nostalgia.
Serebrier sustains the atmosphere without a single gasp or hesitation.
The lush violins are superbly floated for the Korngold The
Adventures of Robin Hood. Elmer Bernstein’s miniature
suite from To Kill A Mockingbird has a Gallic lightness
and yearning poignancy. Clio Gould cozies up close and husky
for the Rozsa Sherlock Holmes music which is drawn from
the Violin Concerto. The Hungarian skirl is a Rozsa trademark
on display again here. The Waxman Sunset Boulevard is
given a viciously urgent spur and is driven so hard that it moves
into Herrmann territory. A year later Waxman turned in another
signature score in A Place In The Sun complete with world-weary
saxophone and uncanny pre-echo of Shostakovich 11 in the chase
music. Serebrier is especially good, in these moments, at unleashing
a sort of controlled wildness. Tiomkin’s Dial M for
Murder is a lush romantic score but Tiomkin lacked the blazing
genius of Herrmann or Waxman and this shows in what ends up being
pleasantly intriguing rather than riveting. Nino Rota’s Godfather music
is pastoral shimmering in the Sicilian Pastorale, shiveringly
doom-laden in Michael and Kay and operatic lump-in-the-throat
tender in the Love Theme. There’s lovely legato
playing by the RPO’s oboist. This is altogether a classy
album.

Volume 1 has its moments but seems a notch down from its successor
in all settings. There is clarity about the sound but the well
known Watford Colosseum, on this occasion, fails to yield the
sort of lush amplitude balanced with a degree of transparency
found on volume 2. It’s intrinsically perfectly enjoyable
but suffers in the comparison. I found this in the book-end Western
themes especially The Big Country by Moross though the Magnificent
Seven overture was less affected. Serebrier certainly knows
how to accent this music and those eruptive golden horns in the
Bernstein are matchlessly glorious. Steiner’s Casablanca suite
suffers from what was already pretty much of a hokum score with
much tired play made of national anthems. Steiner’s fault
- I had the same problem with the RCA Gerhardt Steiner Classic
Film Music album. Nothing has changed. The Spellbound Concerto by
Rozsa is nicely despatched by Elms and the rest. The four movements
from Psycho have urgency, macabre cold atmosphere and
tensely freighted threat - the latter wonderfully done in the
Sibelian tremble that makes up most of The Stairs. The
shrieking violins for The Murder are very sharply delineated.
Tiomkin’s The Guns of Navarone lumbers somewhat
but soon develops a rather English film music style perhaps a
little like Addison’s miniature masterpiece A Bridge
Too Far (Chandos; Ryko;
EMI Classics). Serebrier imparts real tenderness to the Love
Theme from Ben-Hur and plenty of swagger for the Charioteers’ Parade.
Herrmann’s Taxi Driver score was his last and was
written contra torrentum in a world where cinematic scores
seemed to be abandoning the orchestra. Phil Todd delivers a caramel
smoochy saxophone solo. I have only recently heard Previn’s
LSO Sea Hawk music (Korngold’s Sea Hawk, Prince
and Pauper, Elizabeth and Essex and Captain Blood -
Abbey Road, July 2001, DG 289 471 347-2). While Serebrier is
often more than very good he is a rung down from Previn in terms
of sheer sound. That said, the brass interlacing and terracing
he secures is impressively and excitingly done. The Addinsell Warsaw
Concerto is well executed but failed to stir me. Gone
With The Wind is more Steiner but this is Steiner at his
personal best and Tara’s Theme yearns very nicely
indeed - at first in a delicacy worthy of Elmer Bernstein and
later in swooping strings. Speaking of Bernstein I cannot praise
too highly again those whoopingly exultant RPO French Horns in
the final Magnificent Seven track - glorious glorious.

There you have it: two generously packed CDs, well documented,
each with great strengths and featuring sharply imaginative and
challenging playing. CD 2 stands a step up in recorded sound
terms over CD 1. They’re each a great way to survey the
Hollywood classic scores.

It’s what Serebrier brings to the podium that now makes
me want to hear him tackle some of the complete film scores.
I keep whittering on about recording Prokofiev’s war-time
film music (not Nevsky and not Kije) but its also
well past time that Mario Nascimbene’s score for The
Vikings and Hugo Friedhofer’s The Best Years of
Our Lives were revived and recorded afresh; the latter has
been done in modern sound but Frank Collura’s conducting
on Intrada seemed flat and undifferentiated to me. Serebrier
would be an ideal choice for these projects.

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